This past weekend I officially popped my Podcamp cherry. Tagged everywhere as PCTO09, PCTO09, Podcamp Toronto was a whirlwind of activity. Although it wasn’t easy motivating myself out from under my nice, warm duvet at 8:00 on a Saturday AND Sunday morning, it was well worth the effort.
Day 1 was pretty intense, with large crowds, and ‘standing room only’ in some of the more popular sessions. Whether you were interesting learning best practice when engaging with bloggers; how to calculate (and dictate) your success on Reddit, Digg, or StumbleUpon; or effectively (and creepily) stalk your audience, there was something for everyone.
The Molson party following the Day 1 festivities was also well attended – apparently we are all easily swayed with promises of free beer tastings, munchies, and swag (who can resist 6 free Heineken glasses!).
Day 2 was a little emptier. I imagine most people were probably nursing their hangovers and live streaming from the comfort of their beds. The great thing about having everything stream live and archived is that you know you’re not missing out on any content – sometimes it was really hard to choose between sessions.
Overall, a great first experience. PCTO was well organized, FREE (thanks to generous sponsors), and filled with tons of networking opportunities. I was able to put names to faces and faces to names, and engage with people whose eyes didn’t glaze over at the first mention of Twitter, SEO, or Blogging. Thanks to all the organizers and volunteers for their hard work – I think it was a great success!
This post was written by Heather Morrison, who has previously written about Israel's Use of Social Media and about Building Your Twitter Empire here on BlogCampaigning. She is @Hmorrison on Twitter.
Thanks to Wayne Macphail for the photo above.